Real World

Wow, It is hard to believe that Friday has come and gone yet again. We keep edging closer to the time of the year when everything grinds to a halt due to the dreaded TAKS. For some of my classes this was the last day of regular instruction before review. Today though was business as usual, and was overall a pretty good day. I had projects due today, of which I had probably 30 percent of the kids turn them in on time. This is less than my optimistic 50 percent from yesterday. I was ready for this low turn out and have decided that I am going to give them a little dose of the real world. I had a paper for them to sign that had them acknowledge that if they did not turn it in by next week on the block day that they would receive a zero for the project. I garnished this dose of reality with the fact that why every day up until that day was ten points off a zero on a project typically resulted in a failure for the six weeks. We are going to have a test next week that will help the rest of them get to either passing or failing depending on their mood.
  My plan is simple, I have a typed notice that I am going to make copies of on Monday. Basically, it is what you or I would get in the mail if we missed a bill payment. I will hand this to them if they do not have the project on Monday, and give them a final notice on Tuesday for those that do not feel that they need to turn it in. On Block day anyone that has not turned it in will recieve a notice of failure for the project, which will be something that they have to sign yet again. You may be asking why I need to do this? Why go through so much trouble creating notices and doucments to have the kids turn in a project. The answer is simple. I want to be able to stand up and say that I gave them  the required time and they choose not to do it. I want to be able to show to the principal that I gave them the oppertunity to turn it in, so he be confident that their failure is just.
  Recently through meetings it has come to the attention of most of the teachers at our campus that the people that are truly undermining the state of education are not necessarily the bad teachers, though they do their part, it is the school district administration. We were told in a meeting that no matter what we did to fail the kids the school board could override us and have the kid graduate anyway.What is the point to assign the grade in the first place if you know that your grade means nothing? I realize that there is a lot of pressure from the state on graduation rates. Everyone knows that Texas sucks when it comes to graduating high school, but to put forward kids that do not do a thing is ludicrous.
 We work so hard to try and get the kids to care about class, to work hard in school. When a person above you makes a decision to pass a kid it is for the graduation rate, but that concession becomes a growing problem that dominoes. We start with passing one kid that did not deserve it, it moves to the other kids finding out who tell the incoming seniors this, and the entire class starts to think that it does not matter if they work or not since they will graduate anyway. We suffer from senior entitlement already. Seniors think that because they passed the TAKS test that they are owed a graduation. We do owe them something, we owe them the respect not to allow them to put forth less than stellar work. To show them that if you work hard enough you can accomplish something. Without these concepts the students will be lost in the real world. We do not need a a generation of moochers.

A Lighter Note:  
So to end the day on a lighter note I just want to say that I there is nothing like a school that the faculty works together well. We may have our differences with some of the decisions that are made that are out of our little school's control, but we come together and really do some pretty awesome things. Today we had a buffet, where everyone in our section brought a part of the meal. It was fantastic. We all sat down and enjoyed good food and some laughs. It really makes me think how lucky I am to be doing something finally that I do love doing. My hope as I write this blog is that I do not loose sight of that or you as the reader does not loose sight of my passion for education. We can always hope fo8r a better tomorrow, but I fell we need to do all we can to make a better tomorrow.

Until Monday,
"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
--George Bernard Shaw